Australia

Australia is the ultimate Oscar film via previews - an foreign period epic love tale with dramatic war themes and two A-list stars, as well as a critically acclaimed director who has his own style. What you get after nearly 3 hours of viewing is a disarray of incomplete mixed messages and wildly intersecting plot points that leave you disappointed and confused.

It's not quite as bad as I make it out to be. Typically I am a Kidman hater. I don't think she's attractive, or that great of an actress, but in this film, she hits her character right on the money. She plays an uppity British aristocrat who heads to Australia when she thinks her husband is cheating on her, only to find him dead. From there she learns on the run how to manage a cattle ranch with the help of Jackman and some unfortunately misplaced aborigines.

Jackman does fine, but there are far too many prolongued camera shots of his swarthy, concerned face. He is too Hollywood to play a real cattle driver, and the cliche that he has no name except "Drover" makes my eyes roll (and my eyelids heavy).

The story progresses quickly for an epic period piece, but there are far too many areas of focus to keep your attention on any one general problem. The film covers the entire gamut of serious topics; racism, sexism, war, class differences, cultural differences, poverty, industrial competition, love and loss, the list goes on and on. This is my primary problem with this film. There is no focus, and by the end, there are so many scattered emotions that there is no sense of lesson learned or moral victory.

I was reminiscent of There Will be Blood, but only on a surface level. There were also many overt references and allusions to the Wizard of Oz, so Baz Luhrmann clearly has a personal affinity to the story (he is directing Wicked in 2010...) Unfortunately, as original as the story was, the characters and developments were not compelling in the slightest.

I was a big fan of Moulin Rouge, and deeply respect Luhrmann's abilities as a writer and director, but Australia missed the mark. Perhaps too ambitious, perhaps the wrong timing for this particular story. Whatever the case, I won't give up on him in the cinematic world, but I would be as surprised to see any Oscar nominations for this as I would for Tom Cruise as Colonel Von Stauffenberg. The scenery is beautiful and the cinematography well done, but this is not a Best Picture candidate. 5/10.